Escape from dialect: finding the origins of the new second person of ‘to be’ in Colloquial Belgian Dutch

In Belgian Dutch, expressing the second person singular ‘you are’ can be done through either the formal ‘jij bent’ from Standard Dutch or the informal ‘gij zijt’ used in Flemish dialects. A recent development in Colloquial Belgian Dutch (CBD) introduces a unique variant: ‘gij bent’, which combines the traditional ‘gij’ pronoun with the ‘bent’ conjugation from Standard Dutch. This form has sparked division among Flemish language users, with some finding it natural and others disliking its perceived contaminated nature. The emergence of ‘gij bent’ in CBD can be traced back to northern Antwerp dialects (Ooms 2022). Interestingly, this form does not appear in Flemish dialects documented in the DynaSand database (Barbiers et al. 2006). To unravel the origins and prevalence of ‘gij bent’ in Flanders, I conducted a study involving the analysis of over 5000 posts from X (formerly Twitter). I geocoded all posts based on user profile locations, assigned gender to users with the help of a governmental dataset on first names, and distinguished between formal and informal posts by exploiting the implied formality difference between posts with general statements and posts mentioning others (‘pseudo-conversations’). A logistic regression analysis reveals that ‘gij bent’ is predominantly popular in the Brabant dialect area. In addition, the model suggests a tendency for ‘gij bent’ to appear more frequently in posts with general statements than in conversational posts, implying a formality difference. Moreover, posts believed to be from women exhibit a higher usage of ‘gij bent’. To complement the regression analysis, a Generalised Additive Model was constructed, resulting in a heatmap illustrating the usage of ‘gij bent’ in Flanders. This heatmap reinforces the findings from the regression model, indicating that ‘gij bent’ is centred in the north of the Antwerp province and confined to the Brabant dialect area, without extending beyond Brussels in the south. The fact that ‘gij bent’ emerged from northern Antwerp, an area not traditionally considered to be in a linguistic leadership role in Flanders (De Caluwe 2009), is peculiar. I contend that, although the form likely originated from northern Antwerp dialects, it may not have been initially recognised as such and was subsequently reinterpreted as an innovative, hybrid, and ‘less informal’ construction in CBD. The restriction of ‘gij bent’ to the Brabant area remains puzzling, but could be linked to the accelerated dialect loss specific to this region (De Caluwe and Van Renterghem 2011).